


On postcards and summer

by BarkingBard



Series: Remembering the stars [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Longing, M/M, Nostalgia, Pining, Postcards, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarkingBard/pseuds/BarkingBard
Summary: He felt revulsion and contempt for the bright sunshine that burst blindingly out of the holiday postcard and demanded his attention. Thoughts of summer sent him spiralling.Revised and beta tested version.
Relationships: Oliver & Elio Perlman, Oliver/Elio Perlman
Series: Remembering the stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906891
Comments: 27
Kudos: 34





	On postcards and summer

[](https://ibb.co/TPQMQXm)

He stared at the postcard incredulously. He had collected the bundle of mail from his mailbox and sorted it into piles; ‘junk’ that would be discarded straight away and ‘bills’ that he would look at later. The bright sunshine burst out blindingly from the holiday card and demanded his attention. It made his heart sink.

He could almost smell the salty air blowing across the water and the sun sizzling on his skin. He would love the opportunity to watch his color shift from its wintry silver to the majestic golden brown of summer. He longed for the feeling of release that the warmer weather roused in him. It eased the heaviness in his soul and bathed his whole world view in light.

Oh, how he longed to go back to the times when his body would forget the feeling of lace up shoes, exchanging them for the delight of soft, heated sand under his feet. The times when he could be engulfed by the gentle cuddle of summer breezes and the heady aroma of distant fragrant gardens. Summer was expansive and liberating. Receiving this fucking card left him cold.

He read to the end of the scrawled, barely legible note and felt the weight of sentiment hit him. On the one hand, his friend had at least bothered to think of him long enough to include him in their holiday. On the other, the whole gesture left him flat.

He had collected an assortment of varied and eclectic cards over the years. In his youth, they were images of family holidays and greetings from long dead relatives. With maturity, however, they slowly changed to missives from lovers and once-lovers and work colleagues. Some cards, he valued so highly that he framed them and hung them on his walls. They were still there, trapped under glass, preserved forever. They felt like pinned butterflies of hope, each unique and beautiful, each slowly decaying with the years.

This one would end up slipped into a small box in a cupboard, never to be reviewed again in any great depth. He would only discover it much later, completely by happenstance, when he was searching for something else. He would be left holding an object without context, its meaning long lost.

He would wonder why he hadn’t thrown it away earlier, but this decision would be too great to resolve at that moment, with his mind seeking something else. He would replace the box and go on with his quest, rummaging for whatever it was, the box forgotten again.

This collection of thoughts and sentiments would fade through the years, like the bonds with so many of his friends and acquaintances. Those people who had once been so important to him, ones to whom he had sworn his undying allegiance and devotion, ultimately also lost somewhere along the way.

All too soon, life and complex personal affairs would cause them to drift apart. Their bond would be stretched so far and so thin that they wouldn’t even feel the final snap. Once their link was severed it would never be reattached and life would go on as before. Their interactions, once as vibrant and intense as his summer tan, would slowly fade away in his memory. They would be destined to reside only in the shadowy areas of his cupboards.

In middle age, there were no big blow ups which had been so common in his youth. He thought back to the friendships publicly destroyed in loud school yard disagreements. The ‘grown up’ way was a silent and frozen demise, similar to the graying mortification of old age.

He had been lucky, or rather, felt luckier than most with the way his life had turned out. He came from a collection of honest, god-fearing people of meager means. People who managed to consolidate their position through austerity and frugal economy. They never tried to keep up with others and had no care for current trends. Their quiet, respectable lives would see them drift into obscurity, but not before passing on an ever-increasing sum to the next generation. He was the heir to opportunities that his illiterate forebears would have been utterly unable to dream of. He knew his prosperity was bought with their hard-earned labors.

And what had he bought with their generous gifts? Steady employment, scholastic successes, and opportunities to travel? His opinionated relatives perceived his demeanor as conceited arrogance, a further blight on his golden appearance. They thought his pretensions, his airs and graces and his emotional distance to be haughty snobbishness. “Oh, the great doctor”, they would joke at his expense, “of nothing that is practical.”

He had done so much in remarkably few years and achieved most of his goals. He should feel proud. Accomplished. But as he stared at this card, from someone he cared less and less about the longer he stared at it, he was forced to question his choices. This feeling of callous coldness he felt as he read each word brought a lump to his throat. What opportunities of genuine friendship had he missed?

He could blame the endless distractions of work or research, which bore him the fruit of isolation and indifference. He felt akin to a nomad, cut off from the hope of a tribe. He had jested that he was a man who belonged to the world, but in truth he was just adrift and alone, antagonized by the universe and everyone in it.

He was a man without country, an alien entity trying to function within but not fully understanding how to connect with his own people. That said, he had at best a rudimentary interest in trying to rekindle any form of kinship with his family. He just couldn't care less. The world had left him drained.

And so this line of reflection lead him to its inevitable conclusion and his ultimate self-destructive question:

_So, what has become of your great loves?_

The thought struck him hard and square in the chest, a blow that would floor him as it always did. The answer was bleak. No matter how much he sugar coated and reviewed each passing fancy or tryst, over and over, the outcome would always stay the same. The truth, loathe as he was to admit it, had become evidently clear.

He knew this sort of thinking was not healthy and would lead him down a morose and destructive path, but sometimes he just couldn't help his wandering mind. Sometimes he just sat and wondered whether there was truly any love left anywhere in the world.

***

He continued to spiral through the evening and into the early morning, nursing successive tumblers of whiskey. The current glass had once contained ice that had long since melted and mixed with the amber liquid. His drink was now as murky as his thoughts. His could taste its acrid taste in the back of his throat but he wasn’t stopping. He glanced at his watch face, the hour glaring back like an accusation. It was too early in the New England morning for him to call anyone, but then he realized that it was much later over there. Picking up his phone, he dialed the number instinctively.

“Pronto,” the curt, pre-coffee voice stated down the line.

His gut wrenched and he inhaled sharply as the sound of that voice stole his breath. It was as bright, fresh and forever as sultry as that summer so many years ago. He only managed to rasp: “Oliiiiiverrrr.”

Almost instantly came the whispered reply: “Elio… Elio… Elio… Elio… Elio…”

It felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. A millennium of held back tears filled his eyes, and with a cracking voice he replied, “I remember everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am eternally grateful for to the wonderful 'walkingthetightrope', for making time in her over packed world to review and polish this work. You can not believe how grateful I am to you for your assistance. Your clever insights and sentence repairs to my fractured fragments were invaluable. You rock!
> 
> I have just re-read my favourite book of my 20's the magnificent Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'. After 20 years of festering in my memory reading it with fresh eyes and much more abilities to identify bastards, piss-heads and psychopaths and how they manipulate and gaslight their survivors, the book has taken on a very different place in my psyche.  
> It left me nostalgic and cold. Yes, it is mid-winter here in the southern hemisphere and the coldest time of year for us. -3 degrees (26.6 f) last night and August has just begun for us.
> 
> Yes, I still adore the book and the cleverness of the characterizations and the feeling they exude and impart on the reader. But I also feel stronger connected to the protagonist's longing to belong to a tribe of equals, based on intelligence and common good will and not the family or community that one was born into or those that you have a vague biological connection.
> 
> To cut a long story short, I recommend you read 'The Secret History' and I humbly apologise to Oliver, again, for bearing the brunt of my musings.


End file.
